I started teaching in 2013, and like every new teacher I knew, I walked in expecting it to be hard but not that hard.

The teaching part — the planning, the writing units — I could do. What I hadn’t been shown was what to do when a Prep class couldn’t sit down. What to say when the same student ran out of my room for the third time that morning. How to stop a transition falling apart for the fourth time before lunch.

So I did what most teachers do: I tried everything, cried in my car a fair bit, and pieced together — through trial and error and a lot of late-night Googling — a system that actually held.

That story is where Chaos to Calm came from.

But my business is bigger than behaviour. Working as a curriculum coordinator, I fell in love with the structure side of teaching — building units, planning the year, making sure the writing block actually built writers.

And underneath all of it has always been a deep love of books and reading. That's what eventually pulled me into the library. Training as a Teacher Librarian taught me how to put the right book in the right kid's hands — reading widely across every year level, curating for the kid who devours books and the kid who's been put off them, learning what makes a reluctant reader finally pick something up.

The kind of love that wants every kid to find the book that gets them.

What I enjoy most is helping other teachers — and saving them time. Handing them the resources I wish someone had handed me when I was a time-poor classroom teacher.

Who am I now?

Twelve-plus years in primary classrooms (Prep to Year 6) — as a classroom teacher, teacher librarian, and curriculum coordinator. I'm also a children’s book author (co-writing books with my sister (see Sarah and Emily Authors).

I built sarahhodgson.com.au because I wanted to take the things I’d learnt the hard way and put them into resources that other teachers — and the homeschool parents quietly doing the same job — could actually use on a Monday morning.

Reading Club

Live online reading groups for kids in Years 1–9. The tagline is “for every reader — the reluctant, the voracious, and every kind of reader in between” — the kid who finishes a book in two days, the kid who’s only ever read graphic novels, the kid who’s been told they’re “behind”. Every reader is welcome. We read great books, we talk about them, and somewhere along the way the hesitant reader starts looking forward to finding out what happens next.

Chaos To Calm

A practical behaviour management system that holds in real classrooms. I step teachers through it in the Chaos to Calm course — not just theory but the actual words to say and the actual moves to make when behaviour happens. It’s the course I wish someone had handed me in 2013.

Novel Studies

Structured novel study units built using The Writing Revolution approach. The same activities every week — comprehension, vocabulary, sentence-level writing (because/but/so, sentence expansion), paragraph work, discussion.

Consistent activities mean students spend their thinking on the book — not on working out what’s being asked of them. Every novel read personally. Every question written by me, not AI. I’ve spent the planning hours so you don’t have to.

What I Believe

A few things, briefly.

• That kids deserve to fall in love with books, not just improve at reading them.
• That novel studies should be made by a teacher who’s actually read the book — every word, every chapter — not by an algorithm that hasn’t.
• That teachers deserve resources made by someone who has actually been in the room.
• That homeschool parents deserve the same quality a great school teacher would use — and shouldn’t have to design it from scratch.
• That behaviour management isn’t a personality trait. It’s a learnable system, and most of us were just never shown.
• That schools are busy places, and so are homes, and the most useful thing I can do is take work off your plate, not add to it.

Qualifications

For anyone who wants the formal version:

• Bachelor of Education (Honours)
• Master of Education
• Master of Education (Teacher Librarianship)

What's Next?

If you’re here because you teach, start with Chaos to Calm or the novel studies.

If you’re here because of your kid, start with Reading Club.

Either way — thanks for being here.

Sarah